Linux Ubuntu 9.10 : The Desktop Guide

Introduction

Updated for Ubuntu 9.1o (Karmic Koala) – this is the missing guide on how to setup Linux Ubuntu Desktop. :

Note that this guide is still a work in progress. New sections will be added as I discover new things. Refer to Table of Content (which is automatically generated) for the latest listing of available topics. Enjoy!

Installation and preparation

This section covers the initial preparation you should do and the initial installation procedure of Ubuntu, from Disk Partition Strategy – the geeky bit that deters a lot of people from installing Ubuntu but if one right will save future you tons of data salvaging trouble to the installation of NVIDIA drivers and additional packages.

Disk Partition Strategy?

Not many people give much thought on disk partitioning. Yet this is the first thing that will be asked by the Ubuntu installer (or any OS installer) during the installation procedure.That is – “on which disk would you like to install me?”

If you haven’t done this before, here’s a quick info: Disk partitioning is a way of dividing your hard disk into compartments. Once partitioned the compartments can be used differently. You can even install Windows in one compartment, and Linux on the next (for example).

It’s good to plan ahead, because if you don’t this thing will come and bite you. This section will show how I partitioned and set up my disk – obviously, I would recommend something similar to what I have now, as personally I find this setup to be really good.

However if you don’t feel like this section is applicable to you, just skip it 🙂

Like many people, I have 2 hard disk in my PC at home. To make it simpler, let’s call the first one sda and the second one sdb. Now this is how I have set up the disk partition:

The grey bubble above shows the order of setup. So let’s walk this through:

Step 1 – Installing Windows XP on SDA

Using Windows XP’s installation disk, formatted the whole disk, and then divides the disk in two partition.sda partition 1 is formatted in NTFS, sda partition 2 is left unformatted.

I then proceeded to install Windows XP all the way. I don’t do much customization here because I don’t plan to use my Windows XP as my primary Operating System. If anything, I will probably only boot to this Windows XP if and when my Ubuntu broke in any major way.

Once done, log in to your Windows XP in SDA and don’t shut down your PC yet.

Step 2 – Formatting SDB to NTFS for data storage

From within Windows XP, use the disk manager (in Control Panel : Administration tool) and locate your second disk, sdb.

Use the disk manager to format the whole sbd in NTFS. This will become your designated data drive. Any data you have should be stored here here. So during the formatting, label the disk datadisk or something like that.

When this is done, you can shutdown your Windows XP OS.

Step 3 – Installing Ubuntu on SDA Partition 2

At this point Ubuntu can be installed on Ubuntu SDA Partition 2. Slide in Ubuntu Live CD and start the installation procedure

When asked by the installer, you will know exactly which partition to use – that is, sda2 which is basically the other half of your first disk.

Note the order of installation, installing Windows first is important, because when installing Linux, GRUB boot loader will be written to your disk’s master boot record in a way that allows it to co-exist with Windows. If you have installed Ubuntu first, Windows wont play nice an overwrite whatever thing is already in the master boot record. As a result, you won’t be able to boot into your Ubuntu (blame it on Windows!)

While waiting for it to install …

The reason for going through all of this trouble to set up your disk is as follow:

In the event that you stuff up your Ubuntu installation, you can always boot back to Windows via GRUB and work on your data (which is stored in NTFS, and is readable by Windows)

In the event that you want to play some games that is only available in Windows and running Windows on Virtual Machine doesn’t cut it, you can boot back to Windows via GRUB and play there.

In the event that you stuff up both of your OS (Windows and Ubuntu) – your data is on a separate disk, in NTFS which is easy to mount and recover. You can take your time to reformat your first disk, reinstall whatever OS you need to install, and re-mount your data drive. All is good again!

The fact that your data is on a separate drive also means that it’s very easy to back up the whole thing. I.e. just do a copy of the whole drive, either to a network storage or to an external USB disk drive (which is quite cheap these days).

With this setup, I have never experienced a data loss for over 7 years, which is why I am so recommending this (if you don’t mind going through all of the trouble to set this up).

Ubuntu Installation Complete? Update!

Once installed you can do package update (the equivalent of Windows Update) by using the icon on the system tray – click on the package update and let Ubuntu download all of the latest packages from the net. When this is done, you are now ready to customize Ubuntu to your heart’s content.

Enabling NVIDIA Graphic Driver

The NVIDIA Graphic Driver Update allows Ubuntu to utilize your NVIDIA graphic card to the full. Unless this is done, you won’t be able to activate all of Ubuntu’s eye candy. I recommend you doing this. On your system tray, you should be able to see a green ‘PCI card’ icon that says ‘hardware drivers’ (it’s the icon with the lock emblem below):

When you click on it, it’ll give you options to update your NVIDIA drivers to the latest one available. Follow the menu and update the driver. To make life easier, just select the one that Ubuntu recommends for you.

Enable extra desktop effects (a.k.a Compiz Eye Candy)

Once your NVIDIA driver is installe, your VGA is ready for some heavy lifting. So let’s get it something interesting to do by enabling compiz.

System > Preferences > Appearances

tab: visual effects, select ‘extra’ and hit ‘apply’

Once done, you will realize that your desktop is slightly different. Smoother minimize and maximize animation, wobbly window when you drag them along, drop shadows, and so on. If you see all that, congratulations, you have enabled compiz.

Installation of Additional Packages

I find that I needed to install these software packages afterwards, so for that reason I would recommend that you install all of these.

Additional Packages Overview

vim
a command line file editor, tool of the trade for tinkering with configuration files through terminal

flashplugin-nonfree
Flash plugin for Firefox browser 🙂

gnomedo
Command line launcher that does a lot of things – kinda like slickrun in Windows or Quicksilver in MAC – why icon launcher when you can command-launch it?
And apparently gnome-do also works as the dockbar (the icon wave thing) that you find in OSX.

compizconfig-settings-manager
The program to configure all of the GUI bling (once you enable compiz)

gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
Codecs that lets you stream mp3 over the network, for internet radio 🙂

w32codecs, libdvdcss4
Lets you watch DVD and other movie formats

VLC
It’s *the* movie player that plays almost any video format

sun-java6-jdkThis is the SUN Java JDK, if you want the runtime only, then install sun-java6-jre instead.

gtk-recordmydesktopThis is the application that lets you record your own desktop (screencasting)

rarFor woking with rar archives

openssh-server openssh-client
Allows for remote SSH access (for the tech-savvy out there, who can't live without SSH)

Firefox comes with Ubuntu 9.10, so you can open the link above with Firefox, find the wallpaper you want, and use Firefox’s right cliek menu to set the image as your desktop background immediately. Very convenient indeed.

How can I configure Compiz?

If you have installed the additional packages as I have recommended. Compiz configuration can be found via

System > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager

Tip:

You can bind compiz features to your mouse, keyboards, or sreen corner mouse-overs.

For example, I bind the expo feature (zoom in and out of a given desktop) to my first thumb button in my mouse. This way, with a click of my thumb I can go in and out from one virtual desktops / workspaces to another.

Gnome Theme: The OSX Look and Feel

Some people don’t like the Mac OSX look and feel, I find that the UI design from mac is very clean and cool – I don’t see why we shouldn’t nick that bit off Mac 🙂 For this, enter Mac4Lin.

What is it?

The goal of this project is to bring the Mac OS X user interface to POSIX Operating Systems (GNU/LInux, FreeBSD, openSolaris etc.). The project is built for desktop environments based on GTK — Anirudh Acharya, Developer – Mac4Lin

Locate a file called ‘Mac4Lin_Install_v1.0.sh’ and double click it to run the install.

To uninstall, just do the same to the other script (Mac4Lin_Uninstall_v1.0.sh)

gnome-do

Gnome-do is not only a wave-dock that shows your list of running application (like the one you find in mac). It is also a command line launcher similar to Windows’s Slickrun or Mac’s Quicksilver. Truly it is the best of both worlds! If you have followed my recommendation, gnome-do will be installed under additional packages section and can be started from:

Application > Accessories > Gnome Do

Additional Applications

An OS by itself amounts to nothing, if not for all the little apps that can enrich your computing experience. This section covers the other application that you may want to download and install, download, and configure.

VirtualBox – Virtualization Engine

Virtual machine is a way of running a complete operating system inside your Linux Ubuntu (for example, Windows). I find that having my old copy of Windows lying around to be a bit of a waste, because Windows is not completely useless – and there’s a lot of good apps in Windows that I need to go back to from time to time.

What is VirtualBox ?

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See “About VirtualBox” for an introduction.

Once done, VirtualBox can be started from Accessories
(Or, if the menu’s not there, start it from GnomeDO with “sun virtualbox”)

Once VirtualBox is running, click on ‘new’ to create a new virtual machine

Give it a name, choose the type of OS you want to install (i.e. Windows XP)

Slot in your OS installation CD and follow the installation procedure

Warning & Tips:

I couldn’t get my Nokia E71 to be detected by VirtualBox. The trick is to start VirtualBox as root.
( using command: ‘sudo VirtualBox‘ )

VirtualBox – Guest Addition

Once installed you will notice that the mouse and keyboard does not switch back and forth between your guest OS (the OS inside the virtual box) and your Linux Ubuntu seamlessly. To achieve this, you need to install the GuestAddition into your guest OS. To do this:

Audio

Switching between audio output

Sourced from:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1370383

Create this script anywhere in the system, preferably under /usr. This script basically allows you to “round-robin” your audio output device, so say you have a headset and a speaker, this script will toggle from one to the other.

Then, set it as executable via chmod a+x, and then you can either create a shortcut to invoke it, or bind the script to a hotkey.

Quirks / Annoyances Fix

Ubuntu is a great Operating System, but it is nowhere near perfect yet. A lot of customization needs to be done to get it to do what you want. Here are some of the steps I did to fix up some of the ‘quirks’ I found in this version of Ubuntu.

Mac Keyboard function key

If you happen to use Mac Keyboard with your Ubuntu …

… then you will find that the Fn key doesn’t work as other keyboard would. When you press F12 on this keyboard, it’s for adjusting volumes. Now maybe you want this, maybe not. A lot of programmers and geeks actually uses the function keys a lot. F11 for example are used mostly for ‘full screen’. Alt+F4 is another well-known one, for closing window. But with mac keyboards in Ubuntu, the behavior is reversed. So here’s how to fix this.

Firstly, Open the file /etc/rc.local

Then, modify this file to add this line, just before exit 0. See mark in the comment below:

Shell

1

2

3

# add the line below, just before 'exit 0'

echo2&gt;/sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/fnmode

exit0

Save the file, and restart your Ubuntu.

Enabling The Mic In Gtk-recordMyDesktop

This is weird, even after you plug in your mic and you try to record a sound, nothing came out. Well, by default, the mic is not enabled. To enable this,

If you have followed my recommendation to install the additional packages, gtk-recordMyDesktop should already be installed. it can be started in:

Application > Sound & video > gtk-recordMyDesktop

Click on ‘Advanced’ and set sound to ‘pulse’

When all else fails, ask for help!

Go to the IRC channel #ubuntu at irc.freenode.net.

Many great individuals who are passionate about Ubuntu will be more than willing to help other fellow Ubuntu users like you are.